Forum posts

Don't listen to these heretics, Dimbark. NEVER use snap to grid, and carve is probably the best tool in Hammer. All the professionals use it.

Another good idea is to set texture scale on everything to about 0.01, and create a giant skybox around your map, preferably at the very edges of the grid. That way you'll prevent any and every leak that might appear in your map!

I'm still interested in hearing about the shadow/lighting capabilities...

Is it possible to create dynamic shadows with world objects (brushes) in the Raven engine? For instance, the metal bars in the third screenshot casting shadows when you shine your flashlight at them.
I remember when I tried out the HLFX demo a couple years ago, I was most intrigued by this, where apparently light can pass through the transparent part of { textures and the textured parts casting shadows. I imagine some very interesting light play could be achieved through utilising this, which in turn would be great for atmosphere.

Flower Travellin' Band - Kamikaze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzGihuz3HxM

I guess my reason for preferring GoldSource to Source is quite simple, if we disregard Steam and Source SDK's tendency to break... I don't like the "feel" of Half-Life 2 and Source games in general. There's just something about the movement and combat I find very unsatisfying. While GoldSource, on the other hand, is much closer to the movement and "feel" of Quake, which it was build upon. Quake, in turn, is one of my favorite games, much so because of the immensely satisfying feeling of movement and control over maneuverability. Also the weapons and combat are awesome.

Hmm, according to this post: http://forum.hlamnesia.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5, the author of the engine apparently made it first and foremost for friends. I wonder, though, if one proves "worthy enough", if he'd consider letting more mods use it. I just think it's a waste that they go through all the hassle of working on enhanced lightning, effects etc. and then it may never end up in a finished mod anyway. Same goes for HLFX, some great possibilities there for modders, yet the creators seem persistent not to let anyone else use it... as far as I know, anyway.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/from-beneath1

Seems like this mod uses the enhanced renderer from Raven City, check out the video on the middle of the page, looks pretty nice...

I think the flashlight is actually a spotlight. But here's something I've been wondering about for a while... if I ever get off my ass and start working on a proper mod, I'd like to see rotating emergency lights (like at the beginning of Agroprom in Stalker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj9njhgPng4&feature=related) with actual lights, not just func_illusionary brushes. Given that the flashlight is a light that follows the players movement, wouldn't it be possible to code a light entity to follow a func_rotating for instance?

Don't mean to hijack the thread, just some thoughts...

Black Mesa seems quite impressive indeed. All that's left to see is if it plays as well as it looks.

Hm nice. I will try that.

Decals should be grayscale 8-bit indexed color bmp images, with the last color in the index being the color you want the decal to be. You can change this in Wally, open your texture in Wally, go to Colors>Edit Palette and manually change the last color in the index. Also decal names should start with {

To hotdog: yes you can use custom decals in Half-Life, at least I got it working with the newest version of HL in Steam. You don't even have to place it in decals.wad, I just made a wad of my own and the decal worked perfectly.

Hammer 3.5 crashes if you try to use models with the cycler_sprite entity, just so you know.

Yes to all accounts. If I edited it outside animation mode I would have noticed in MS3D as well when trying to play the animation, but it appears fine there.

Thanks - those instructions looked simple enough to follow, but I still managed to run into trouble.

I compiled the Barney model with my animation as a sequence .smd, and although the old animations looks OK when viewed in Half-Life model viewer, my animation turned out like this:I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I made my custom animation like this: decompiled the Barney model and used the Barney skeleton and mesh as a base, made the animation in MS3D, then I exported my animation as a sequence .smd, edited barney.qc to include my animation (the line I added is: $sequence benchlift "benchlift" loop fps 30), compiled barney.qc - and what is shown in the image is the result. The animation itself seems to be working fine, it's just the mesh that is utterly messed up.

Hello.

I just started fiddling around with animating HL models using Milkshape 3D, and have a few questions.

First, how would I go about adding a custom animation to an existing HL model? I decompiled the Barney model and used the mesh and skeleton as a base for the animation, but I haven?t made any changes to the model itself. I want to add my animation (which I already exported as a sequence smd) to the Barney model, so that I can use the sequence in-game.

Also, are there any limits on how many frames a single animation can be in HL? Currently, my animation is on 400 frames, but I?m thinking of making it even longer.

Lastly, if I were to make a skeleton for a model from scratch, how can I make it so I am able to move different parts of the mesh in animation mode? When I made my Barney animation, I could only rotate joints, if I tried to use the "move" tool on them, the mesh would be completely messed up - however, there was a joint (seemingly not connected to any part of the mesh) that I could move that would move the entire model without strange results.

Thanks.

Nevermind, I figured out what was wrong... I had to assign the vertices of the model to a joint for the sequence .smd to compile properly.

Seems like I'm becoming a regular on these forums, every time I need help with something...

Anyway. Every time I get stuff working properly in Milkshape, a new problem seems to appear. I created a model of a toilet, 365 vertices and 541 triangles. Everything seemed good, but when I compile the qc file, I get the message "MS3D has stopped working", and subsequently the compilation process fucks up. I tried to compile the model with StudioMDL, but the same thing happens - the program just stops working.

When I created the model, I made one half and then duplicated it, and welded the sides together. But I realised, along the middle line of the whole model, there were too many triangles as a result of mirroring the half, perhaps four times as many triangles as necessary. I therefore cleaned the model up a bit, but after doing this and choosing "face>smooth all", I get these ugly borders along some of the triangles:

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/7734/toiletargh1.jpg

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/444/toiletargh2.jpg

I have no idea what's causing this, but choosing "tools>model cleaner" seems to suggest "a group contains two or more verts that, when welded, will cause discontinous texture mapping. do you want to separate the verts?", but I have no idea what the hell this means, or what the hell is wrong with these verts in particular. Mind you, these verts go along the new triangles I created after having cleaned up the two half parts, when I realised there were too many triangles...

Argh! My brains! Help me please, you experienced people out there!

I don't want to hijack the thread, but it's sorta relevant, so I might as well ask here.

I downloaded Spirit, set up the configurations in Hammer as they should, and immediately encountered a problem. Each time I select one or more brushes and select ToEntity to turn it into a solid entity, there are only point entities in the list that appears, and if I try to type in the name of a solid entity manually, Hammer just crashes.

Help?

Okay, I guess it could work the way it is now, with null faces being transparent and vice versa. But it's still annoying that when I started up the program for the first time, null faces appeared as black and others as white, and selecting reverse vertex order would invert the colors, so it was easier to see which side was what. And without having modified any settings whatsoever, it just stops working.

That didn't work, World Crafter. Unchecking "Draw Backfaces" only made the null side of triangles transparent instead of black, reverse vertex order still doesn't work properly. When I try it, what was previously the transparent (null) side of the triangle turns black instead of white/gray.

Okay, so I've been getting into modelling lately, and all was going fine, made some starter models and everything. Then today when I fired up MS3D again the reverse vertex order function suddenly decided to stop working properly. When I change the vertex order of the selected face, nothing happens in the 3D view, except that the face may get a different shade of white/gray - but it isn't inverted, i.e turned to face the other side. When I go to Tools>Selection Editor, the faces show up as they should, so the reverse vertex order command works, but not properly in the 3D view. Very annoying if I have to check the selection editor all the time to see if the faces are facing the right direction. I tried reinstalling MS3D, but to no avail.

Any idea how to fix this?

So I made the box part of a smoothing group, and that seemed to do the trick - it was still solid white in HLMV, and I started to get increasingly pissed, but for some reason, it worked when I tested it in-game, chrome effect and everything.

Thanks for the replies.

Ok, I tried doing the same with a sphere, but the same thing happens - no sphere map / chrome effect. And I vividly remember seeing a completely flat, boxy model with a chrome material applied to it in-game in a mod, although I can't remember which...

Any idea what the problem is, if it's not the shape of the model?

Hi.

I've been mapping for some time and decided to try out modelling as well, to make some simple props for my maps and whatnot. I'm using MilkShape 3D and figured out how to make a simple box and apply a material, which I want to have a chrome effect (like on Barney's helmet). When I choose my material in MS3D, I choose "sphere map", to get the desired effect. I compile the model just fine using StudioMDL, but when I open the model in Jed's Half-Life Model Viewer, the material is "static", i.e not chrome... and when I check the "chrome" tab in the textures window, the model's material turns solid white. If i try to use the model in-game after checking "chrome", it also turns out a solid color. The material I'm using is "glass_bright" from halflife.wad, but that isn't the problem - I've tried using materials created from scratch, the material used for creating Barney's chrome helmet effect, not checking "sphere map" in the materials tab in MS3D and then checking "chrome" in JHLMV... the result is still the same.

Please help! This is driving me insane!